Let's say you're working on a big project with multiple files, directories, and subdirectories. In one of these directories/subdirectories/files, you've defined a method, but now you want to know exactly which files in your entire project have been calling your method. How do you do this?
You mentioned grep so I'll throw this solution out there. A more robust solution would be to implement a version control system as Fibbe suggested.
find . -exec grep 'method_name' {} \; -print 2> /dev/null
The idea is, for each file that is found in the current directory and sub-directories, a grep for 'method_name' is executed on that file. The 2> /dev/null is nice if you don't want to get warned about all of the directories and files you don't have access to.
The most common way to do this is by using your editor. For example emacs can do this if you create a tag index with etags.
Source: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-lisp-intro/html_node/etags.html
The you just types M-. and type the name of the function you want to visit and emacs will take you there.
I don't know what system or which editor you are using but most editors has a simular function.
If you don't use emacs an other good way to keep track of functions, and get a lots of other good features, is to use a versions control system. Like git, it provides really fast search.
If you don't use a version control system you may want to look at a program that is designed just for searching. Like OpenGrok.
Related
I am planning on filing a bug on coreutils for this, as this behavior is unexpected, and there isn't any practical use for it in the real world... Although it did make me chuckle at first, as I never even knew one could create files with wildcard in their filename. How practical is a filename with a wildcard in it? Who even uses such a feature?
I recently ran a bash command similar to this:
ln -s ../../avatars/* ./
Unfortunately, I did not add the correct amount of "../", so rather than providing me with an informative error, it merely creates a link to a "*" file which does not exist. I would expect this to do that:
ln -s "../../avatars/*" ./
As this is the proper way to address such a filename.
Before a submit a bug on coreutils, I would like the opinion of others. Is there any practical use for this behavior, or should ln provide a meaningful error message?
And yes, I know one can just link to the entire directory, rather than each file within, but I do not wish newly created files to be replicated to the old location. There are only a few files in there that are being linked right now.
Some might even say that using a wildcard in symlinking is bad practice. However, I know the contents of the directory exactly, and this is much quicker than manually doing each file manually.
This isn't a bug.
In the shell, if you use a wildcard pattern that doesn't match anything, then the pattern isn't substituted. For example, if you do this:
echo *.c
If you have no .c files in the current directory, it will just print "*.c". If there are .c files in the current directory, then *.c will be replaced with that list.
For many commands, if you specify files that don't exist it is an error, and you get a message that seems to make sense, like "cannot access *.c". But for ln -s, since it is a symbolic link, the actual file doesn't have to exist, and it goes ahead and makes the link.
I often find myself taking a lot of time to navigate through my filesystem when using the linux shell. This generally occurs because the autocompletion of bash only works if you provide the start of the file/dirname. What I often end up in is a lot of 'ls' with 'grep' commands, finally doing a 'cd'.
When you use a GUI based filebrowser (like Nautilus) you can type any part of a file/dirname and it will have matches that it jumps to directly. This makes it a lot easier and faster to navigate.
I wonder if anybody knows any great tools that helps with this problem. I know of the existence of Midnight Commander, though I never really used it for real and I couldn't figure out a direct solution for my problem the first couple of times I tried it. Also it seems not suitable because I want to have my shell's current working directory to be changed so I can do stuff there, instead of being stuck in an external program like Midnight Commander.
Try autojmp
https://github.com/joelthelion/autojump
And following article provides another solution
http://jeroenjanssens.com/2013/08/16/quickly-navigate-your-filesystem-from-the-command-line.html
You can first use the autocd or autopushd in zsh. You would just have to type the directory you want to go to, without the hassle of typing cd or pushd everytime.
You also have the globing possibility. For example, if I got those file in a directory:
1-a.tar
1-b.tar
c.tar
I can just type
*a.tar
without caring about the beginning of the file.
As a last solution you can always use an alias to the find command with a personalized option.
Maybe is a often repeated question here, but i can't find anything similar with the search.
The point is that i like to use Emacs for my personal projects, usually very small applications using C or python, but i was wondering how to use it also for my work, in which we have project with about 10k files of source code, so is veeeery big (actually i am using source insight, that is very nice tool, but only for windows), questions are:
Searching: Which is the most convenient way to search a string within the whole project?
Navigating throught the function: I mean something like putting the cursor over a function, define, var, and going to the definition
Refactoring
Also if you have any experience with this and want to share your thoughts i will consider it highly interesting.
Br
The "traditional" way of navigating C source files is to use "etags" to make a file called TAGS, then use ALT-. to go to functions across files.
For searching for strings in files, I usually use "grep". You could make a shell script with all the directories you want to search or something if you get tired of typing them in each time.
My projects typically live in git, so I put this together to quickly search them:
;; There's something similar (but fancier) in vc-git.el: vc-git-grep
;; -I means don't search through binary files
(defcustom git-grep-switches "--extended-regexp -I -n --ignore-case"
"Switches to pass to `git grep'."
:type 'string)
(defun git-grep (command-args)
(interactive
(list (read-shell-command "Run git-grep (like this): "
(format "git grep %s -e "
git-grep-switches)
'git-grep-history)))
(let ((grep-use-null-device nil))
(grep command-args)))
There is also the Emacs Code Browser. It makes exploring projects a lot simpler. See here and here for more information.
Regarding searches in the whole project, I find extremely useful the rgrep command.
Also, imenu is quite handy to jump to a function definition in the same file.
These are my 2p.
look to EDE from CEDET - it provide base support for projects...
ECB is too heavyweight for my taste. I have had good results with xcscope. Needless to say it doesn't help too much with Python.
http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CScopeAndEmacs
In addition to using TAGS as others have mentioned, I find igrep and igrep-find very useful. There is also Emacs' built in grep and grep-find, but I find their interface more clumsy.
My standard search is:
M-x igrep-find some_regexp RET ~/work_area/*.cxx
Which will look for all *.cxx files under ~/work/area, and show results matching some_regexp. Like all the search utilities, it populates a compilation-like buffer you can navigate using C-x ` (aka M-x next-error).
There are many ways that Icicles can help with projects. Likewise, Bookmark+ and even Dired+.
These libraries can help you create, organize, and manage projects, wherever their files and directories might reside. And they can help you navigate and search in various ways.
Some of the features are unique -- quite different from other approaches. I could list some of the project support here, but this is the best place to start.
So I was hoping that some old school Vim'ers could help me out. These are all separate questions and normally I would put them up each on their own but I'm not sure if that qualifies as question whoring here.
Plus I think if you know enough to be asking any of these questions they will all be coming up in the near future:
I have a library I'm writing and a series of applications that use that library. There doesn't seem to be an easy way(from what I can tell) to build a ctags file for the library and build one for each of my applications and make sure one references the other when I'm in vim.
Using gf to open files from command mode is awesome, but a lot of my include files
don't contain the full path. They refer to an include directory I set in the IDE. How can I set this directory as another point for Vim to start looking for files?
Is there a way to compile a file inside Vim and send the output to a buffer? I'm currently using MSVS 2k3 but I'll be porting over to Linux in a few weeks so if this is possible on either system I'd appreciate it.
Re 3)
If you put a makefile in your root dir, you can simply write
:make
This will run make and (iirc) put any errors into a seperate buffer, and make vim goto the first compile error. From there you can navigate all erroring lines using :next-error
Also, see this page
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:Vim
and
http://linux.byexamples.com/archives/287/perform-grep-and-make-in-vim/
for details on how to show the result in a seperate console.
1- tags files are independent, and can be used together. See :h 'tags'
I can't tell what is the easy way to build tags files. I have one that consists in using two plugins of mine:
one (draft) plugin that knows how to update C++ tags files (it should be easy to adapt it to other filetypes),
and another (local_vimrc) that helps me define directories-local .vimrc. Thus for any files within a given directory hierarchy, I can adapt the &tags options to use the relevant tag files, and the current tag file that will be rebuilt automatically (or when a keybinding is triggered). (Plugins like project should do the trick as well)
2- :h 'path'
3- :h :make
HTH.
2)
:cd {path}
For help:
:he cd
A few others like :lcd might be better suited. Just scroll down that help page.
This is rather off topic, but might still be useful: if you're using Visual Studio a lot and like Vim, you might want to look at ViEmu. It's the best Vim-emulation for any IDE I've yet seen, and the cost is really low. :) And no, I'm not getting a commission. :P
It's not obvious, but if you open a directory instead of a file, it's nicely browseable.
e.g.
:e . (colon-e-dot)
:e .. (colon-e-dot-dot)
will let you browse from your current directory or its parent.
(understanding that you were probably hoping for a capability to have vim accept e.g.
:e abc.txt
and have it look in several directories, which I don't know how to do.)
It needs to be graphical. No sed, awk, grep, perl, whatever. I know how to use those and I do use them now, but I need to cherry-pick each replace in 300+ files.
I want a tool where I can:
type a search string
type a replace string
select a directory and file extension
and it would recursively go into each file in that directory and its sub-directories, open it and scroll to the place where search string is and offer two options:
replace (and find next)
find next
Nothing more. Reg.exp. support is a plus, but not required.
SOLVED: Regexxer is exactly what I needed. In case someone needs it on Slackware, here's what you need to download and how to compile it (choosing correct version of each dependency can be a PITA)
I think regexxer is exactly what you're looking for:
Regexxer
regexxer is a nifty GUI search/replace tool featuring Perl-style regular
expressions. If you need project-wide substitution and you’re tired of
hacking sed command lines together, then you should definitely give it a try.
See also the screenshot, looks a lot like what you're describing:
Emacs + dired + query-replace-regexp
For complete recipe follow this link (it's rather long, covering all possible alternatives),
jEdit does exactly what you need. It is written in Java and works well in Linux, Windows and OS X (probably other operating systems also).
Lately Kate (if you use KDE) can do it, but in a very tricky way. Go to "Edit>Search in Files", and choose the folder within which your files exist.
The trick is that only after the search results appear, you will find a text box and a button called "Replace checked". This button will do what you want.
I use gVim for this task all the time. I open up all the files at once, then use the commands to perform a subsitution on each file, asking for confirmation. Generally I use < 20 files, so I open them as tabs and use this:
:tabdo %s/foo/bar/gc
gVim works fine on Windows :) My coworkers often use Textpad to do this same thing, but I'd say gVim is much more efficient at it.
If you are a KDE user there's also kfilereplace.